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So you've made a mistake and it's public

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Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#41

Post by Pryde »

macspoofing wrote: post #23

I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate. Mobs don't accept apologies. Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphori…

Surely with regards to outcomes, there's a good argument to be made that one shouldn't admit guilt. But from a more, idk idealistic perspective, the world would be a better place if everyone promptly admitted fault and committed to doing better? I personally quite liked the advice given, and wish I had held myself to it more often in the past.

I think there's definitely some truth to what you're saying, but I also wonder how much this is a problem offline, I've not encountered it heavily, but I'm also not a particularly online person.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#42

Post by krick »

offtop5 wrote: post #24
willeh wrote: post #14

This is purely my personal opinion, but the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web. The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the community than making the actual work of making an encyclopaedia. Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are about creating obscure processes, is in polic…

Considering Reddit and 4Chan are things, Wikipedia is far from being the most toxic . Maybe the most elitist

That's a peculiar way to describe things. I would consider being "elitist" almost synonymous to being "toxic", and thus 4chan being about the least toxic platforms on the list of major English social media, far below Reddit, Wikipedia, Twitter, HN and so on.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#43

Post by egsmi »

This only works if all involved accept their initial axiom, "So you've made a mistake and it's public…".

In my experience getting consensus from all involved that a mistake has indeed been committed is the very hardest part of the whole process.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#44

Post by macspoofing »

Pryde wrote: post #41
macspoofing wrote: post #23

I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate. Mobs don't accept apologies. Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphori…

Surely with regards to outcomes, there's a good argument to be made that one shouldn't admit guilt. But from a more, idk idealistic perspective, the world would be a better place if everyone promptly admitted fault and committed to doing better? I personally quite liked the advice given, and wish I had held myself to it more often in the past. I think there's definitely some truth to what you're saying, but I also wo…

>But from a more, idk idealistic perspective, the world would be a better place if everyone promptly admitted fault and committed to doing better?

I'm not sure about that.

I think there needs to be a distinction between a private apology to specific individuals for specific wrongs vs public apology to an undefined amorphous set of people. The former is certainly the right thing to do and it also offers hope of redemption because the wronged individual can accept the apology and forgive (or not). In the latter case, there is no acceptance, there's only the mob who wants to make an example of you because they now have 100% proof of your guilt.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#45

Post by at_a_remove »

Pryde wrote: post #41
macspoofing wrote: post #23

I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate. Mobs don't accept apologies. Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphori…

Surely with regards to outcomes, there's a good argument to be made that one shouldn't admit guilt. But from a more, idk idealistic perspective, the world would be a better place if everyone promptly admitted fault and committed to doing better? I personally quite liked the advice given, and wish I had held myself to it more often in the past. I think there's definitely some truth to what you're saying, but I also wo…

Yes, but do we live in that idealistic world? I would answer with a very firm no.

The world would be a lot better place if everyone did (any number of things), but perfect compliance is just never going to happen. We cannot get people to not murder each other over shoes or sports teams. Any plan which depends on this compliance is doomed to failure.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#46

Post by metalliqaz »

willeh wrote: post #14

This is purely my personal opinion, but the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web. The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the community than making the actual work of making an encyclopaedia. Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are about creating obscure processes, is in polic…

I agree, sort of. The project is absolutely massive and is a constant target of "reputation management" campaigns. They have the difficult task of managing this thing with a volunteer workforce. What else can they do except make a process for everything? There are certainly editors that revel in the process, and that's too bad. I think the admin would act if the project started going down the drain.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#47

Post by a1369209993 »

willeh wrote: post #14

This is purely my personal opinion, but the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web. The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the community than making the actual work of making an encyclopaedia. Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are about creating obscure processes, is in polic…

> the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web.

That's unfair; there are plenty of even more toxic communities, you just don't hear about them as much because they're less prominent and easier to ignore or forget.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#49

Post by wizzwizz4 »

tlogan wrote: post #11

This is why Trump is a genius. The step 0 should be: never ever admin the mistake. Since you will look bad even if you admit the mistake: it makes no difference.

You will look bad even if you admit the mistake. But admitting to a mistake is good – assuming people already know about the mistake, it's good press to do so. (Especially if you're revealing the mistake to them, when they haven't already seen the mistake; if half of your mistakes are “oh, I messed up”, versus the same number of mistakes but they come out in newspapers first… which is going to look better for you?

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#50

Post by ars »

ape4 wrote: post #25

Jeffrey Toobin: "I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years as a Staff Writer. I will always love the magazine, will miss my colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work,"

Yah, I don't know anything about Jeffrey, but reading about why he was fired - it's not right.

Humans make mistakes. Over and over. People need to forgive.

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